The Eureka Springs Story

BY
Otto Ernest Rayburn

DIAMOND JUBILEE EDITION
1954

Drawings by Gloria Morgan Bailey

Original Printing by
THE TIMES-ECHO PRESS
Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Second Printing, 1982, by
Wheeler Printing, Inc.
Eureka Springs, Arkansas

To my friend
SAM A. LEATH
who has served Eureka Springs
as guide and historian
for more than a
half century.

I
LEGENDS OF THE MAGIC HEALING SPRINGS

Legendary lore concerning the visitation of northern Indian tribes to what is now Eureka Springs, Arkansas is badly mixed and it is difficult to separate truth from fiction. It is difficult to prove the authenticity of a legend. The stories we hear may have original pedigree or they may be mere fabrications by imaginative writers. In history, we have something to tie to, but this is not always the case with traditional lore that is handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. It may be true or it may be a hoax. Tribal lore from the Indians themselves is usually accepted as authentic for the redman was noted for his veracity and had the habit of repeating the tale without variation, but in recent years numerous legends have been “cooked up” by white men and passed off as legitimate tradition. Stories are told that the Indians never heard of. The reliable legends are those that come from the Indians themselves, properly documented.

There are at least three legends of visits of redmen to the “Magic Healing Springs,” as they called them, before white men settled the region. They go back about four hundred years and each of the stories has similar motif. The beautiful daughter of a famous chief, living in the cold north, is stricken with some dreadful disease or has lost her eyesight. The chief tries all the medicine men available but without success. He hears of the healing springs far to the south and treks thousands of miles through the wilderness to get his daughter to the coveted spot. The girl bathes in the water and is healed. Sometimes she falls in love with a handsome brave of the local tribe and marries him. In one case the girl is Mor-i-na-ki, daughter of a Siouian chief. Another story features her as the daughter of Red Cloud, a Delaware. Still another gives Noawada of the Dakotas as the chief and his daughter is Minnehaha (Laughing Water). Each of these legends runs about the same gamut of hardship and privation and ends with the same climax of healing. It is easy to assume that they all originated from the same source, but this may not be true. The historian finds in them sufficient evidence to conclude that the northern Indians did make long trips to the springs, and that the water was widely known for its curative properties and healing powers. But there is no way of separating the chaff from the whole grain except from documented material.

W. W. Johnson, M. D., who began his practice of medicine at Eureka Springs in 1879, the year the town was named, says, “The traditional history of the springs dates back to the days of Ponce de Leon, who had sought for a fountain of youth where he and his followers might bathe and quaff the waters and their age disappear, and they be clothed with the habiliments of youth.” He goes on further to say: “The Cherokee Indians, when in their southern home—previous to their removal to the Indian Territory—had a tradition that in the mountains far to the west of their country, and to the west of the Father of Waters, there were springs that their fathers visited and drank of their waters, and were healed of their maladies. This tradition was handed down from one generation to another. After the removal of the Cherokees to their present home in the Territory, many visited these springs, camped here, and drank these waters. Since the discovery by the white men the writer has conversed with members of the Cherokee tribe, and learned that these were the springs referred to in the tradition.”[1]

One basic legend that appears to be a part of most of the traditional accounts is that of the carving of the basin at the Indian Healing Spring, now called Basin Spring. J. M. Richardson in a letter to Powell Clayton of Eureka Springs, dated May 18, 1884 at Carthage, Missouri, says:

“It was in the summer of 1847 when a conversation took place between White Hair, principal chief of the Great and Little Osage Indians, and myself at the office of the agency on Rock Creek (now Kansas) relative to lead in Missouri and a celebrated spring in the mountains. The chief said when he was a boy the Osages took lead out of the bottom of the creek and smelted it with dry bark, and then run it into bullets. He stated that where the lead was found was in the prairie and in Missouri and two days’ travel from that place in the mountains was a spring the Indians visited for the purpose of using the waters and getting cured. He said he never knew an Indian ‘go there with sore eyes and drink the water and wash in it for a whole moon but what was cured.’”

“The chief said Black Dog’s father, when a boy, scoured out a smooth hole in the rock out of which they would dip the water with cups; that the hole was about the size of the tin basins the white people washed in. The Indians, supposing the spirit of the great Medicine Man hovered round the spring, never camped near it, and never had any fighting near it. In considering Black Dog’s age, I conclude the basin was scoured out seventy years previous to the conversation. The chief said the water spread out over the rock and the hole was scoured in the rock to concentrate the water, and at times it was used to pound corn in to make meal, and that I would know the spring by the hole in the rock. The circumstance had entirely faded from my memory, but in visiting Eureka Springs in 1880, the conversation with the chief recurred to my mind. I felt sure that was the great Indian spring.”[2]

The vast amount of legendary lore about Eureka Springs proves at least one thing. The spring water was highly rated by the Indians for its curative properties. Their numerous trips from various parts of the country to visit this mecca is sufficient evidence that they found what they were looking for.

II
THE STORY OF MOR-I-NA-KI

The tradition, that great healing springs existed far to the south of the land in which they lived, appears to have been wide spread among the Indians of the North in early times. Travelers, who visited these redmen in the early part of the nineteenth century, discovered legends that told of these springs and their miraculous cures. One of these travelers, Colonel Gilbert Knapp of Little Rock, Arkansas, while on an exploring expedition in the copper-mining region of Lake Superior, met a French half-breed who told him an interesting story. The exploring party was camped on an island near Cape Kenewaw, collecting agates and other beautiful gems which were found in abundance. One night, as they sat around the camp fire telling tales, the French half-breed, Jean Baptiste by name, told a story which Colonel Knapp thought referred to Eureka Springs. Here is the story:

“My mother, whose name was Mor-i-na-ki, or the beautiful flower, was the daughter of the greatest of the Sioux chiefs. My father, Louis Baptiste, was an agent of the Hudson Bay Company, whose duties required him to travel with the sledge trains to the encampments of the Indians to purchase furs and peltries. On one of these excursions he met my mother, with whom he became enamoured. He induced her, with the consent of her father, to accompany him to a trading post of the company, where they were married by a Catholic priest. My mother has told me of many of the traditions of my people. One of these relates to the journey of a large number of the tribe to the far-distant south-land. It was many years ago, when one of the winters was so prolonged and severe that many of the tribe died of cold and starvation. One of the chiefs induced the remainder of the people to go with him to the south in search of food. After traveling at great distance they reached the forks of a rapid-flowing river, where the climate was mild and the game abundant. The country was in possession of a tribe who cultivated corn and many kinds of vegetables. These Indians had large quantities of food and grain stored and were friendly to the visitors of the north-land, and supplied them abundantly from their stores. With all the advantages of this beautiful region, the Sioux were not happy, because the daughter of their chief, who had brought them to this country, was stricken with blindness and lameness and could not walk. When the medicine-men of the tribe who possessed this country heard of the sickness of the stranger-chief’s daughter, they came to his lodge and told him of a spring of water flowing from the side of a mountain, only two days’ travel distant, whose water being drank would remove the sickness and restore sight to the blind. They said the water passed through great beds of flint, and in its passage it drew the fire from the rocks, and it was this fire in the water which killed the pain and disease. On receiving this information he had his afflicted daughter, with all his people, moved to the vicinity of the wonderful spring. They camped near where the spring was situated, and at this spring was a basin in the rock where they got the water that cured the chief’s daughter. The chief and his people stayed at the spring six moons, when the sick maiden was restored to sight and health. After her recovery the chief returned to his northern home, and ever afterwards the tradition of the south-land spring was carefully preserved in the tribe.”[3]

L. J. Kalklosch, reporting on this legend, gives this interesting addition:

“When the chief of the tribe who possessed the country learned that the Sioux had camped at the healing spring, he sent a number of his braves with stone hatchets to cut out basins in the rock at the spring for the convenience of the Sioux and his people. These men with their flint hatchets cut one basin below the spring to hold the water for drinking, and another just below for the purpose of bathing. The basins they covered with bark tents. After bathing in the waters and drinking great quantities of it, the chief’s daughter’s limbs were restored to their natural condition, and her blindness was entirely removed, her eyesight being as bright and strong as ever.”[4]

A booklet on “The Eureka Springs”, published by the Matthews, Northup and Company of Buffalo, New York in 1886 says that the Basin Spring was so called because of a peculiar bowl-shaped cavity in the rock. Twelve feet farther down the hillside was originally another basin about five feet in diameter, which was used for bathing purposes. According to this account, this basin was destroyed by overhanging rocks falling upon it. The two basins in the rock, which were present when the town was first settled, are without doubt the ones referred to in the extract of the legend given above.

A slightly different version of the legend of Mor-i-na-ki is given in Allsopp’s “Folklore of Romantic Arkansas.” This version goes into detail regarding the habits and customs of the Osage Indians who inhabited the area at that time. In this version, the Sioux knew of the tradition of the healing spring before they left their northern homeland and made the trip specifically to bring the princess to it.[5]

III
“THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH”

Legend says that healing springs in a far-away land were known in Asia 2,000 years ago and that the tradition was later carried to Europe where it captured the imagination of certain gentlemen in Spain. L. J. Kalklosch gives a report from contemporary writers as follows:

“Before the Christian era, one Ferdinand Levendez, who was in the Roman service for a time, made the acquaintance with a barbarian prisoner by the name of Malikoroff, from whom, in the course of their chats, he learned the story of a fountain, the virtue of whose waters would restore old age to the vigor of youth and of which, if anyone drank continually, he would never die. He (Malikoroff) had it from a Tartar Chieftain under whom he once served.

“The chief told him the fountain was far off in the interior of a great island almost inaccessible on account of the snow and ice to be encountered in reaching its shore, but which, on being reached, it spread out into a vast world, most of which had a pleasant climate.

“Levendez told many of his friends this wonderful story upon his return to Spain and the tradition lived in the fancy of many an aspiring and ambitious Castillian, even to the time of Christoval Colon when it received a new impetus in the mind of Ponce de Leon when he heard the same story told to him by the Mobilian Indians, on his first visit of exploration in Florida. This Indian chief said that he had the story from a Shawnee prisoner taken in battle, and that the fountain was far to the northwest, and after crossing a great river. Says the credulous Mobilian:

“‘I have not seen the fountain myself; I only know that the Shawnee told me so, and he said that his father had drunk of the water, and that he was restored to perfect health and activity after being almost double with pains in his bones for six moons, and he proposed to guide me to the spot for his liberty, but the voice of the other chiefs was against me, and he was put to death. The story may have been true: I found all else true that he told me.’

“Ponce de Leon set out in search of this fountain but he did not even reach as far as the Great River the Shawnee said must first be crossed (its width four times as far as he could shoot with an arrow); being wounded by the natives, he died in the summer of 1512, the remnant of his forces returning to Cuba.

“Now, is there not corroborating evidence of these stories, though reaching back 2,000 years, to convince us that the same spot and the famous fountain lately discovered in Carroll County, Arkansas is the identical fountain of the ancient tradition? Though it may not do all the Tartan chief claimed for it, it does seem to do what the Shawnee asserted it would do, and even more, restoring hair to bald heads, and the gray hairs of age to the color they bore in youth.”[6].

IV
THE DISCOVERY OF THE INDIAN HEALING SPRING

The man largely responsible for the starting of a town at “the springs” in Carroll County, Arkansas was a pioneer doctor named Alvah Jackson. He was a man of many talents. He not only practiced medicine but was also a great hunter and trader. In 1834 he was shipping bear oil down the White River from Oil Trough in Independence County, Arkansas. The town of Jacksonville was named in his honor.

During his hunting trips and trading expeditions into the hills, the doctor contacted many Indians. They told him of a healing spring hidden deep in the mountains that was a sacred spot to the redmen. Jackson began searching for that spring. From the information secured the spring flowed through a basin carved in a table of rock and was located near the head of a small creek with two prongs which flowed into White River eight miles away.

Dr. Jackson spent twenty years looking for this spring. In 1854 he decided that he had found it in what is now known as Rock Spring in north central Carroll County near Kings River. He immediately moved his family there. But he was not satisfied that he had found the coveted spot.

One day in 1854 while hunting in the mountains with his twelve-year-old son, his dogs “treed” a panther in a rock cliff near the head of Little Leatherwood Creek. The boy was afflicted with sore eyelids and while helping dig for the panther, got dirt in his eyes. The doctor told him to go down the hillside to a spring, to rake the leaves away, and wash his eyes. The boy did as he was told and returned to tell his father that the spring flowed through a basin apparently carved by hand. The doctor hurried down to take a look. He recognized it as the Indian Healing Spring he had been searching for these twenty years. (This is the Basin Spring with its carved basin in the Basin Circle at Eureka Springs.)

Each day following the discovery Dr. Jackson rode horseback from his home at Rock Spring and filled his saddlebags with bottles of water from the healing spring. His son bathed his eyes in this water and they healed rapidly. Then the doctor began peddling the water to neighboring towns in Arkansas and Missouri, selling it under the label, “Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water.”

When the Civil War broke out Dr. Jackson refused to take sides. He established a hospital in the Old Rock House that had been a hunter’s rendezvous for many years, and built a crude cabin on the bluff above it. It was open to all who needed treatment, but patronized largely by disabled Confederate soldiers. When the battle of Pea Ridge was fought twenty miles away in March 1862, this rustic hospital was overcrowded. (The Old Rock House may be seen today at the rear of Ray Harris’ Feed Store at the junction of Spring and Main Streets, Eureka Springs. The Everett Wheeler home is at the site of Jackson’s cabin.)

The old Rock House was both hospital and bath house. The doctor took hogsheads and split them into halves for bath tubs. He ordered his patients to drink the spring water until it ran out of their mouths.

Cora Pinkley Call, in her book “Stair-Step Town,”[7] tells how the curative waters of the old Indian Healing Spring were heralded to the world and how it brought thousands of people from all parts of the United States to use the water for drinking and bathing. Judge L. B. Saunders, of the Indian Territory, had moved his family to Berryville in the seventies in order that his son, Burton, might attend Clark Academy. The judge had a leg sore that doctors had pronounced incurable. He was a friend of Dr. Alvah Jackson and frequently hunted with him. The doctor invited the judge to try the water at the Indian Spring for his leg. A cabin was erected at the site and the Saunders family spent several weeks there. The judge’s leg was healed and he was so enthusiastic about it that he spread the news to other parts of the country. Health seekers began to arrive at the wilderness mecca, living in their covered wagons or putting up tents. By July 1, 1879 there were about twenty families camping near the healing spring.

Health Seekers Camped at the Basin Spring in July, 1879

V
THE STORY OF MAJOR COOPER[8]

Major J. W. Cooper was a plantation pioneer in Texas. He had taken part in the Revolution of the forties and then settled down to grow cotton and raise cattle on his vast acreage. Sometime before the mid-century he made a trip to northwest Arkansas and spent some time exploring a section of what is now Benton and Carroll counties. He liked the country, observed the vast stand of virgin timber, and decided to locate there. In 1852 he sold his Texas holdings and started the long trek north.

The trip from south Texas to northwest Arkansas occupied ten years. He had a large strongly built wagon with heavy wheels made of bois d’arc wood which was pulled by giant oxen. He owned sixteen head, eight being used to pull the wagon and eight in reserve. The yokes used on these steers were of immense size. About a dozen Negro slaves accompanied the bachelor Major on this trip.

The reason for the long time occupied in travel was due to sickness of the slaves. They were plagued with malaria; several of them died. Because of this condition the major traveled slowly and camped for long periods along the way.

On March 8, 1862, the Cooper caravan reached Elkhorn Tavern, Benton County, Arkansas. The Battle of Pea Ridge opened that day and the Major’s party was caught in the midst of it. The Major joined the Cherokee Brigade of the Confederate Army and ordered the slaves to butcher the steers for meat. Early in the battle this veteran officer received a wound and was carried from the field. Dr. Alvah Jackson had set up a crude hospital near the Indian Healing spring twenty miles to the east and the Major reported there for treatment. After a few weeks he was dismissed and returned to his command.

Major Cooper returned to Dr. Jackson for treatment in 1863, but was soon released. His last visit, near the end of the war, is reported by L. J. Kalklosch as follows:

“It was in February, 1865, and the ‘Yankees’ were numerous in the country, so that the ‘Johnnies’ were compelled to make themselves scarce or fall into the hands and care of the enemy. Major Cooper did not care to have ‘Uncle Sam’ issue rations to him, so he, with four of his men, were piloted to a secret cave, (the Old Rock House shelter) by his medical advisor (Dr. Alvah Jackson), near the now famous Basin Spring, and visitors find it one of the objects of interest during their rambles over the city. Here he remained for about two months and used freely of the healing waters. But eventually their secret hiding place was discovered by the ‘Boys in Blue’ and they thought it best to find different quarters. The conclusion was not reached, nor steps taken too soon as they narrowly escaped being captured by the Federals. One beautiful feature in the Major’s escape was that he was fully able to meet the emergency as the water had fully relieved him of all his troubles.”[9]

As the war neared its close, the Major bought a tract of land bordering the present City of Eureka Springs on the west. He secured fresh oxen and drove to St. Louis to get saw mill equipment. He built his mill in “Cooper Hollow” and constructed a log house for his home. At the end of the war his slaves were freed, but he succeeded in getting white labor that had been “fired” from Mrs. Massman’s saw mill on Leatherwood Creek. For several years he operated this mill, hauling the lumber to market at Pierce City, Missouri.

“Cooper Hollow,” half a mile northwest of the city limits of Eureka Springs is now owned by Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Woolery. Their modern home is on the same site as Major Cooper’s log cabin. The barn stands on the old mill site. The beautiful spring continues its abundant flow as it did in the sixties and seventies when it supplied water for Cooper’s pioneer milling enterprise.

The Old Rock House was a haven for hunters in the early days. It was the site of Dr. Alvah Jackson’s hospital during the Civil War.

VI
THE COW TRIAL ON LEATHERWOOD CREEK

During the half century before Eureka Springs was settled and named in 1879, settlers trekked in and built homes in the valleys and along the streams of the western district of Carroll County. The region was popular with hunters because of the abundance of game. The virgin timber attracted men who set up peckerwood sawmills to supply the pioneers with building material. It was a rugged environment of hills and hollows and the settlers matched the mountains in which they lived. Many stories are told of bizarre happenings during this early period and one of them is about the cow trial in a paw paw thicket on Leatherwood Creek four miles north of the present location of Eureka Springs.

It was in the lusty Carpetbagger Days of the late seventies or early eighties. The Leatherwood and White River country was sparsely settled with hunters and timber workers who did a little farming to supply the table. The Arkansas-Missouri state line divided the settlement and everything went well until two men got into a dispute over the ownership of a cow. One of them was a farmer living in Missouri, the other was a doctor living across the line in Arkansas. The bovine brute in question had no respect for fences or the state line. If the grass was greener in Missouri, she pastured there, but occasionally she wandered into Arkansas to feed on the luscious provender of the hillsides and creek valleys. When in the “Show Me State” the Missouri farmer claimed ownership, but when she came to Arkansas the doctor “replevined” her and put her in his cowpen. She was a good cow and her milk flowed as freely in one state as it did in the other.

There was no Interstate Commerce Commission in those days to regulate such matters so the right of ownership in this particular case became the talk of the neighborhood. No blood was shed over the controversy, but there were fist fights from time to time when the argument went too far. At last the people of the community got tired of the uncertainty of the situation and petitioned the local justice of the peace to handle it according to law as it was written down in the book.

The Squire agreed to consider the matter and rode over to Boat Mountain to consult a constable who frequently worked with him. They talked the matter over and decided to hold a trial “according to law” although they felt that the cow belonged to the Missourian. They figured the trial would draw a big crowd, if ’norated around considerable, and it would provide a good opportunity to sell a barrel of liquor. This would compensate judge and constable for their efforts in upholding law and order in the community.

Cabins were few and far between in the hills in those days and none were large enough to serve as a courthouse. The Squire had his own seat of justice under a cliff at the edge of a paw paw thicket on Leatherwood Creek. Numerous trials were held here during the reconstruction period following the Civil War and justice was dispensed to the satisfaction of the people of the hills.

A day was set for the trial and the constable began making the rounds, giving summons to witnesses and jurors. He hinted that the cow should go to the Missourian. The late Louis Haneke, who was sixteen years of age at that time, was one of the jurors. Mr. Haneke was a highly esteemed citizen of Eureka Springs in later years and operated a hotel at the spa. The cow trial was one of his best stories. The summons read by the constable to Louie was as follows:

“Louie Haneke, you are hereby summoned as a juror in the case of the cow trial to be held in the Bluff Dweller Courthouse on Leatherwood Creek. You are selected and appointed because of your good citizenship and your great knowledge of the law.” Louie felt greatly complimented.

On the morning of the day set for the trial, men began arriving early on foot, horseback and in wagons. Some of them brought their dogs and guns, hunting along the way. They hung their game in trees at the edge of the paw paw patch and stacked their guns, as the Squire ordered, in a corner of the rock shelter. A hillbilly minstrel was in the crowd with his guitar and he sang old ballads to entertain the men before court “took up.” Even during the trial the judge would frequently declare a recess and call on the ballad singer to give his version of “Barbara Allen” or “The Butcher Boy.”

The rock shelter that served as a courthouse was under an overhanging ledge of rock that provided floor space about ten by thirty feet. The front was covered with rough boards with a wide opening for a door at one end. Near the door sat the barrel of moonshine whiskey which the judge used as a seat while conducting the trial. In front of him were a couple of two by four scantlings, resting on wooden boxes, which served as both a bar of justice and a bar for serving liquid refreshments. Several tin cups were on the improvised bar for the convenience of customers.

The Squire arrived early at the “courthouse,” put a spigot in the barrel, set out his tin cups, and opened for business. As the men arrived, he wrote their names on the barrel with a piece of chalk. When the men ordered drinks, he marked a tally opposite the name for each drink served. Payment was to be made when the trial was over. Then each man paid according to the chalk marks opposite his name.

Promptly at nine o’clock the judge rapped for order and the trial began. The men who claimed the cow were present with their attorneys. The farmer’s attorney had brought a statute from Missouri while the doctor’s lawyer produced one from Illinois, none from Arkansas being available. The judge decided to use the Illinois statute, to favor the doctor and avoid suspicion. He appointed a foreman of the jury and the trial got under way. At intervals during the course of proceedings he would declare a recess for music and refreshments.

The whiskey diminished rapidly as cup after cup was passed over the bar and by mid-afternoon the barrel was empty. The judge immediately called a halt to the proceedings and instructed the jury to go to the paw paw patch and find a verdict.

After an hour in the thicket, the members of the jury discovered that they could not agree. Both the plaintiff and defendant were called in and questioned, but that didn’t help matters. Either the jury was putting on a show or some of its members were not following the court’s instructions.

The Arkansas doctor was a sly man and had provided additional refreshments, hidden in a brush pile in the center of the thicket. At the opportune moment, he produced a couple of jugs and the contents were served complimentary to the jury. No one remembered what happened in that paw paw patch after the jugs were emptied.

Most of the jurors were sawmill workers employed at Mrs. Massman’s saw mill. When news of the party in the paw paw thicket reached the mill, Mrs. Massman sent a man with a wagon to pick up the men that belonged to her outfit. Some of them had crawled to the stream for water and they were piled like cordwood in the wagon, hauled to the mill and lodged in a corncrib to sober up. A few of the men remained in the paw paw thicket.

When these jurors woke up the next morning they found themselves marked with scratches, black eyes and bumps on the head. One of them had a couple of broken ribs. But none could recall what had happened the night before or how the trial ended.

The men “washed up” at the creek and proceeded to the courthouse to pay for the liquor they had purchased during the trial. There sat the Squire on top of the empty barrel, sound asleep. They awoke him and paid their bills according to the tallies chalked up on the barrel against them.

“How did the trial come out, Squire?” asked one of the men. “Did the Missourian get the cow?” “Gosh no,” answered the judge. “You drunken idiots gave her to the doctor.” “Well,” said the juror, “he had the most whiskey.”[10]

VII
THE NAMING OF THE TOWN

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” wrote Shakespeare, but we doubt if any other name for Eureka Springs would fill the bill. It was old Archimedes of ancient Greece who first used the word EUREKA as an exultant expression and started it on the road to fame. The story goes that King Hiero assigned Archimedes the job of finding out the amount of alloy in his golden crown. The old mathematician was puzzled about how to do it for his laboratory was rather inadequate for scientific research. But he was a good observer and one day as he was stepping out of his bathtub he noticed the water running over the sides. This gave him the clue he was looking for and he rushed unclothed through the streets of Syracuse, shouting in his enthusiasm, “Eureka,” which means, “I have found it.” The result is known as the principle of Archimedes which states that a body surrounded by a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. Since that time the word has been used in many parts of the world as an exulting exclamation. California adopted it as a motto in reference to the discovery of gold there. Nineteen states have towns or post offices named Eureka, but there is only one Eureka Springs, named on July 4, 1879.

The basin of the old Indian Healing Spring, now called Basin Spring, is located at the bottom of the Wishing Well in the Basin Circle Park. Mounted on the railing above the basin is this plaque:

“Directly beneath this sign is the original rock basin after which the spring was named. It was here on July 4, 1879 that Dr. Alvah Jackson and about twenty-five families met and adopted the name suggested by C. Burton Saunders, Eureka Springs.”

C. Burton Saunders was the son of Judge J. B. Saunders, and was about fifteen years of age at that time. He was a student at Clark’s Academy in Berryville and it is possible that he had read of the discovery of Archimedes in his science books. But it is still a matter of dispute as to who suggested the name for the town. L. J. Kalklosch says:

“When the discovery of the Healing Spring was a certainty, the virtue of the water beyond dispute, and a village was springing up, the necessity of a name suggested itself to the citizens and visitors as they were. Some suggested that it be named Jackson Springs; others that it be called Saunder’s Springs; but a Mr. McCoy, who had no doubt read of the discovery of Archimedes, said to name it Eureka, ‘I have found it!’ This was agreed upon and the young mountain queen was christened ‘Eureka Springs.’”[11]

I know not what the truth may be regarding the naming. I tell these tales as told to me.

VIII
THE CITY IN EMBRYO

Eureka Springs was named on July 4, 1879 and it was a boom town from the start. Within a year there were an estimated 5,000 people living near the springs. L. J. Kalklosch tells about this phenomenal growth in the book he published in 1881.

“Little did Judge Saunders think in May, 1879, when he went with his wife and son to camp in the wilderness, miles from anything in the form of a permanent dwelling place, where the wild animals dwelt unmolested except when disturbed by an occasional pioneer hunter, and among hills seemingly intended for light footed animals, instead of man and domestic animals accompanying him, that ever a city, possibly the first in the state, should spring up in so short a time.

“After his cure was an established fact, the news soon spread, passing from tongue to tongue, and other afflicted mortals, hearing the good news in the wilderness, at once turned their eyes and footsteps in the direction of the star of gladness; and soon other cases of almost miraculous cures were creditably established.

“The news spread like wildfire. Poor afflicted mortals were soon seen drifting in from all directions. Rejoicing, over the cures effected, was constantly rising in the wilderness. Many heard of the wonder, went to see, as did the Queen of Sheba, whether what they heard was true, and they could exclaim with her that the half had not been told. Others with an eye to speculation, soon found their way ‘through the woods’ to the modern Siloam so that by July 4th there were about 400 people assembled in the gulch at the spring to celebrate the National holiday. As yet the great discovery had not been noticed by any of our Journals, but had been conveyed from lip to lip, and the visitors were principally from the surrounding country and villages of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri. By the incredulous it was denounced as a ‘humbug’ and the more credulous with having foolish delusions, the effect of the water being attributed to the power of the imagination only. But as the doubting Thomases went one by one to see if what they heard be true, on their return they reported about as follows:

“‘I don’t know; there seems to be something to it. I never had water act so on me. People may get well, but I don’t know whether it is the water or not; they are swarming like bees and it is hard to tell what it will do.’

“The writer resided at Harrison, Arkansas, forty-five miles east and heard all the reports that went abroad, but believed it all to be a kind of excitement that would abate with the coming of winter frost. He had not thought enough of it to ‘go and see’ as did many of his fellow townsmen.

“About the first of July, 1879, Judge Saunders erected the first ‘shanty’ for the better protection of his family. Some people now ventured the opinion that a village would grow up here, but no one was ‘silly’ enough to predict a city of tens of thousands. Even a year later the absurdity of building a city in such a place, with no inducement but the water, was talked of by many. The water has, however, proved to be quite sufficient to induce the building of a city.

“In August (1879) it presented the appearance of a camp meeting ground and everybody was at the height of enjoyment. People were camping in sheds, tents, wagons and all manner of temporary shelters; some were living in the open air with nothing but the canopy of heaven to shelter them. There was nothing to do but to eat, drink and pass the time away in social chat, telling, perchance of the ancient legends of the ‘Fountain of Youth,’ the late discovery, their afflictions and, the most important, their delivery from disease.

“To give it still more the appearance of an old time camp meeting, ministers of the gospel were here, and preaching was not uncommon. The preacher’s stand was frequently a large rock, and the gravelly hillsides answered for seats to accommodate the audience. The hillsides were spotted with camp fires to warm the usual ‘snack’ or to bake the ‘Johnny cake,’ as up to that time there were no boarding accommodations and each visitor brought his provisions with him. One of these fires had burned a tree partly off at its base, and while nearly all were engaged in the noon-day repast, a tree fell and struck the wife of Professor Clark of Berryville, causing her death in a short time. This was the first death at the famous springs, and a very sad one. The remains were taken to Berryville and interred there, to rest until it shall so please the Almighty Being to give all mortals power to put on immortality.

“Judge Saunders’ shanty was soon followed by another, and another, until the idea of a grocery suggested itself to Mr. O. D. Thornton. People were coming in daily and when their provisions failed they were compelled to go out for a new supply. This Mr. Thornton decided to remedy, at least in the line of groceries. Soon a rough plank house was erected near the spring and the first stock of groceries brought to Eureka Springs, amounting possibly to $200. People began to rush in and plank or box houses were soon scattered over the hillsides and across the gulches, all trying to get as near the spring as possible without thought or regard of system or anything.”[12]

Mr. Kalklosch continues about the growth of the town and mentions the importance of the saw mills operated by Mrs. Massman and Mr. Van Winkle. The first boarding house was set up by a Mrs. King from Washburn, Missouri. She could accommodate only five or six boarders and was always full to capacity. Then the Montgomery Brothers put in a stock of merchandise and did a thriving business.

IX
JOHN GASKINS—BEAR HUNTER

Among the pioneers who settled in the vicinity of the Indian Healing Spring before the town of Eureka Springs was founded was the Gaskin family who located on Leatherwood Creek in 1856. “Uncle Johnny” as he was affectionately called by his friends, was one of the famous bear hunters of the Ozarks and he left a record of his hunting adventures in a booklet entitled, “Life and Adventures of John Gaskins in the Early History of Northwest Arkansas.” This little book, published at Eureka Springs in 1893, tells the Gaskin story from the time the family moved from Washington County, Indiana to Carroll County, Arkansas in 1839, up to and beyond the founding of Eureka Springs half a century later. Most of it consists of his hunting escapades (he killed 200 bears in thirty years), but there are some references to his neighbors and the economic set-up of that day. In the introduction he tells about the discovery of the springs and the community’s early development.

“As I was one of the first settlers in the country, living along the creek three miles below Eureka Springs for thirty-eight years, I will tell something about the discovery of that place.

“I had hunted all over these mountains—killed bears and panthers and many other wild animals in nearly every gulch and cave in that vicinity. I have killed nine bears in the hollow near the Dairy Spring and many deer, for that was a good place for them. My regular stopping place was the Rock House, or cave, above the Basin Spring in which Alvah Jackson camped on his hunting trips. We often camped there, using the Basin water for our coffee and never imagining it was more than pure water, until Uncle Alvah camped there with them. They simply dipped the water up from the little basin.

“Then Uncle Alvah began to use the water for other diseases, finding that it was beneficial. He induced Judge Saunders and Mr. Whitson to go there in the summer of ’79. Then others began to come and were cured and benefitted; the whole sides of the mountains were covered with tents.

“I was there every day, watching and wondering. The people crowded around the Basin Spring (that was the only spring at first, though in a short time others were discovered) dipping up the water that poured down over the rock into the little basin, one waiting on the other.

“I would watch for hours, wondering how it could be that I had used the water so long and now to see the crowds gathering there for the cure of all kinds of diseases. Many who were not able to walk would use the water and be able in two or three weeks to climb the mountains, at that time steep and rugged and without roads. Wagons would turn over in trying to drive too near the springs. Once on the bench of the mountains they would take off the wheels, and let the axles rest on the ground. Then tents and afterwards houses were erected.

“One incident that happened that summer impressed me with solemn thoughts. For lack of a house a great many people gathered under the trees one Sunday to hear the preacher. A rain came up and we all retired to the rock house. As I listened to a good sermon and saw the preacher laying his book on the rock where I had so often set my coffee pot, my mind ran back to the many times I had camped here, to times when the scream of the panther or the growl of the bear mingled with that of my dogs in the fight. Little did I think that afterwards I would sit here and hear the voice of the man of God echoing among those rocks. I was convinced that the all-wise Creator had not made these mountains and valleys merely for the wild beasts.

“People kept pouring in, and in the fall and winter of 1879 my house was always full of sick and helpless people who had no shelter. We could never turn them away, and many times my wife and I had to give up our own bed.

“One miraculous cure I remember was that of a young man who was brought helpless to my house by his father. He had rheumatism and had to be carried in from the wagon. He drank freely from the keg of Basin water we had at the house, and then his father took him to town the next day and bathed him in the water two or three times a day. In one week they came driving back and the boy was sitting up in the seat and could get around very well. The old gentleman started on to his Missouri home with his son and a barrel of Basin water....

“The town built up rapidly without much form or improvement of streets until after Governor Clayton located here, and through his influence and energy the town soon had a railroad and passable streets, and then the springs were improved and the streets fixed, adding much to the looks and comfort of the place. Now it is one of the most picturesque towns to be found in the state, and is visited both for health and pleasure. The town has many magnificent buildings and substantial enterprises, including the Sanitarium Company, which has grounds near Eureka Springs and is doing much in the way of improvements. The beautiful scenery in every direction fills the visitor with astonishment not to be described with the pen.”[13]

One story is told about John Gaskins and his encounter with a bear near Oil Spring on the outskirts of Eureka Springs. Some say it was another hunter who killed the bear, but the incident is usually credited to Uncle Johnny.

The White Elephant rooming house was located near where Mount Air Court now stands. It was in the early eighties and Eureka Springs had no water system such as we have today. Water was carried from the springs for drinking water and household use. “Aunt Min” who operated the White Elephant was worried. It was customary to send a couple of girls to Oil Spring down under the hill for water, but a bear had been seen in the vicinity of the spring and the girls were afraid to make the trip. Water was needed at the White Elephant so “Aunt Min” sent for Uncle Johnny Gaskins, a famous bear hunter, who lived on Leatherwood Creek north of town.

Uncle Johnny arrived at the White Elephant early one November morning, his trusty double-barrel muzzle loader in the crook of his arm. He would get the bear if it had not already taken to its den for the winter.

“Take a bucket and bring back some water,” said “Aunt Min.”

The hunter took the wooden pail in one hand and his gun in the other and started down the hill, his eyes alert for bear tracks. It was a cold morning and he put his hands into his pants pockets, carrying the bucket in the crook of his left arm, the gun in the crook of his right. Two hundred yards down the hill the trail makes an abrupt turn to the cliff from which flows the Oil Spring. At this point Gaskins came face to face with a large black bear followed by a half-grown cub.

He had killed many bears in close quarters and seldom got excited about it. But this occasion called for quicker action than he had ever experienced. Before the hunter could get his hands out of his pockets the bear had the end of the barrels of the gun in her mouth, chewing like mad. There was no time to get the gun to his shoulder so he fired from the hip, pulling the triggers of both barrels with his left hand, the bucket still on his left arm. It stopped the bear all right, almost blowing the animal’s head from its shoulders, but it did more than that. The end of the barrels in the bear’s mouth caused the gun to explode. Gaskins got a severe wound on his right forearm from the “kick” of the gun. The end of the barrels were twisted out of shape by the explosion. You may see the twisted barrels of this old gun at the Ozark Museum, Highway 62 West, Eureka Springs. Go and see for yourself.... Oh, yes, they had bear steak and spring water for dinner at the White Elephant that day.[14]

Vance Randolph gives this tale under the title “Uncle Johnny’s Bear” in Who Blowed Up the Churchhouse? (New York, 1952), pp. 72-73. In his notes (p. 200) he says:

“Told by a resident of Carroll County, Arkansas, March, 1934. This individual credited it to Louis Haneke, who used to run the Allred Hotel in Eureka Springs. Sam Leath, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce at Eureka Springs, told an almost identical story in 1948, and showed me the remains of a shotgun which he said was used in killing the bear. Otto Ernest Rayburn wrote a story based on Leath’s account. It was published in the Eureka Springs Times-Echo (April 20, 1950) and reprinted in Ozark Guide (Spring, 1951, p. 53). Rayburn says ‘the twisted barrels of the old gun may be seen at the Ozark Museum,’ which is on Highway 62, west of Eureka Springs. Both Leath and Rayburn give the name of the hunter as Johnny Gaskins, who killed more than two hundred bears and wrote a book (Life and Adventures of John Gaskins, Eureka Springs, Ark., 1893, pp. 113) describing his hunts in great detail. But Gaskins does not mention this adventure. Some old residents think it was Johnny Sexton who killed the bear at the ‘White Elephant.’ Cora Pinkley Call (in Pioneer Tales of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. 1930, p. 24) prints a photograph of Sexton with a shotgun in one hand and a wildcat in the other without any reference to the White Elephant. Constance Wagner tells the story in her novel Sycamore (1950, pp. 151-52), but doesn’t mention the bear-slayer’s name.”

The Basin Spring as it appeared in the early days.

X
“WATER PACKIN’ DAYS”

The first settlers at Eureka Springs considered the water from the Basin Spring to be a potent agency for healing and rejuvenation. Judge J. B. Saunders, one of the first to try the water, gave this report:

“In five weeks I lost thirty-three pounds in weight and forty odd pounds during my stay, and felt that I had been fully renovated, or made new, and was as active then and now as I ever was in my life. I will also add that from the frequent bathing of my head in its waters, and the improved condition of my health, portions of my hair changed from a yellowish white to black, its original color. The color of the hair then grown was not changed, but a new crop grew out from the scalp, the color of my hair in my younger days.”[15]

John Gaskins, the old bear hunter, seemed to think the water from this spring might influence the mental as well as the physical life of those who used it. He wrote:

“I want to add that I believe we are raising boys here at Eureka Springs on this pure water who will have the brains for presidents. I often tell people that I have made it possible for them to raise children here by killing the bears and other wild animals. Now in my old days I have the pleasure of seeing so many nice healthy children that I feel repaid for all that I’ve gone through, and sincerely hope that my efforts have not been in vain.”[16]

The late Amos J. Fortner was brought to Eureka Springs by his parents in 1882. He was a young lad with his body twisted with infantile paralysis. Here is his story:

“Life in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, was almost unbelievably crude in the early days of 1882 and 1883, three or four years after the ‘healing springs’ were discovered by white men, and the place became a mushroom city of five or six thousand people almost overnight. No water works, no sewer system, no paved streets, no street cars and, of course, no automobiles.

“My first memories of the town that was destined to become the leading health resort of the Ozarks are of gangs of men drilling and blasting on the side of the mountain to change Spring street in the vicinity of Sweet and Harding springs. Previous to that time Sweet Spring was in a little hollow far below its present location and almost exactly underneath a high foot-bridge which spanned the ravine. The bridge permitted a short cut from the Crescent Springs district to the down-town area. Somehow they were able to locate the underground flow of water and bring it out to the present street level. Then, of course, the original Sweet Spring went bone dry. I rather believe they relocated the Harding Spring also, but I am not sure of this. So it happens that the convenient locations of some of the springs on Spring street are not entirely the work of nature.

“In after years I often saw crowds of people waiting their turns to fill their pails with the good water from Sweet, Harding and Crescent Springs. These scenes would give a new and vivid meaning to a picture on one of the cards I received at Sunday School: ‘Women waiting at the well.’ I would use my childish imagination and wonder if an angel was hidden in some dim corner by the bath house to ‘trouble the water’ so that the people who came to bathe could receive miraculous healing.

“Property values in those days were based considerably on the proximity to some good spring. Consequently the homes of the well-to-do people were not located on the hill-tops but on the lower levels where water was plentiful and easy to obtain. We poor folks lived higher up on the hill where rent was cheaper. Generally, we didn’t have to pay any rent at all, but, of course, we had to carry our water a long ways and up the steep hillside.

“I recall that my brother, who had an inventive turn of mind, built a rolling water keg so that he could ‘horse’ the water up the mountain side and not have to carry it. My sister and I would frequently help him pull the keg up the steep places on the trail. But living that way on the very tip-top of Eureka’s sun-kissed hills had its compensations. We, the poorest of the poor, did actually ‘look down’ on the poor rich people on the lower levels.

“Another advantage of living high up on the hill was the wonderful view. My brother some how got hold of an old Civil War telescope about three feet long and we would look through it and count the chickens in the yards on East Mountain. I would sometimes lie for hours on my stomach in our little yard and travel far away among the pines and cedars growing on the distant ridges. One time I saw a boy and girl sitting together on a distant hillside with their arms around each other and when they kissed I almost passed out for I was only seven or eight years old at the time. I saw other things through that old telescope that I should not have witnessed at my age, but let’s skip that. Many happy hours did I spend with the old ‘seeing eye’ and I am quite sure that my passionate love for Nature stems from the beautiful things I saw through it from Crescent Hill.

“The city of Eureka Springs owes a great deal of its picturesque and rugged beauty to one man—Powell C. Clayton. He had a vigorous program of creating beauty out of a medley array of tumbledown shacks that dotted the hillsides. Of course, he made enemies with some property owners. Property values were certainly low at that time. My father bought one of the old-time houses and three city lots for $100, paying $5 down and $2 a month. Previous to that time we had lived in at least ten different houses during a five year period. Not one of these houses had a stone or cement foundation except along one edge which rested on the hillside. Usually the building was supported by spindly wood posts, the length determined by the steepness of the hillside. Some of these houses were so high from the ground that we could walk around underneath without bumping our heads. One of them had a southern exposure and it was so high off the ground that the sunshine would reach back far underneath. My mother took advantage of this spot for early spring garden, planting radishes, onions and lettuce. A little later cornfield beans were planted and trained up the posts that supported the house. That year we were eating garden vegetables some weeks earlier than any other family living in northern Arkansas.

“We had to move frequently. The house we lived in would be condemned and an official city demolition crew would tear it down. But always Mr. Clayton would tell my parents of some other house in which we could live, rent free, until it came time to tear it down, then we would move again. At one time when my father was out of town, Mr. Clayton even paid the expenses of our moving. But he was in a hurry that time. He wanted to immediately start clearing the ground for the erection of the Crescent Hotel and our shack was on the spot where the hotel was to be built. Oh how I hated to leave that hilltop!

“The lumber salvaged from the town was not wasted. Many car-loads of used lumber were shipped to western Kansas to build houses and barns for the pioneer families of that region. Many a woman, I have been told, stood at the door of her sod-shanty and wept tears of joy when she saw the ‘old man’ coming with a big wagon load of second-hand pine lumber from Eureka Springs.

“Why a lad of six or seven years should remember these things I will never understand but, nevertheless, they are true.

“I have always thought that the building of the street car system was a civic blunder, but I may be wrong. And I am even more positive in my opinion that the coming of the automobile age was a great calamity to Eureka Springs.... Now, wait a minute before you call me crazy!

“In 1879 the ‘Healing Spring Country’ was a vast uninhabited wilderness where timber wolves prowled and howled and froze the blood in the veins of their waiting victims, and foxes had their dens in the caves and crevices along the hillside. Many a ‘big bad wolf’ slacked his thirst at Basin Spring and perhaps cured himself of his mangy ills. (Some ‘wolves’ do that now, I am told.) In just two years the wild animals had to take to the bushes to make room for five thousand people who had poured in to make their homes at the springs.

“There was a reason for the spectacular growth of Eureka Springs, probably several reasons. The people believed in the water as a cure for their ailments. Practically every family had some member who had been brought back from the brink of the grave to health again through (so they thought) the ‘magic power’ of the healing springs.

“I feel that I owe my life to Eureka Springs! My parents took me there in 1882, my body ravaged and my spine twisted with infantile paralysis. I had lost my sense of balance to the extent that I would fall headlong if my dragging feet so much as touched a rough spot on the floor. I fell perhaps thousands of times while I was learning to walk a second time. My parents moved into a cabin in a lonely hollow not far from Basin Spring. Each day fresh water was brought from this spring for my dishpan bath. It wasn’t long until I began dragging my feet along as I tried to follow my brother when he would go to the spring for water. I even began to try to climb the hillsides by holding to bushes growing there. Each day I would go a little farther up the hillside. Then a great day came!

“I heard a church bell ringing sweet and clear on the hilltop high above our home. An intense longing entered my childish heart to answer that pleading call in person. With wishful face I asked my father, ‘Daddy, may I go up there?’ A moment’s thoughtful pause and then his answer. ‘Why yes, Jesse, you may go. I think you can make it and no harm to try anyway.’ So I got out all alone to climb that rugged hill. So steep the way, so painful the going that I often had to touch the ground with both my hands as though I were climbing a ladder.

“After many rests I made it to the top of the hill and entered the little unpainted church where I sat through the service. Then at the end I heard those people sing! Most of them were in Eureka Springs to keep from leaving this ‘vale of tears.’ They not only sang, they shouted the words:

“My heavenly home is bright and fair,

I feel like traveling on!

No pain nor death can enter there,

I feel like traveling on....”

“If ever I have gotten religion in my entire life, it was in that very hour in the little church on the hilltop, and I was only six years old. You say a kid of that age can’t ‘get religion.’ That’s what you think. I knew the facts of life and death far better than most children of my age. My ears were sharp and I had overheard my mother and father discuss my probable death in broken tones of grief and despair. They already had six precious children sleeping in early graves scattered through the Ozark hills where they had lived. And I would be the next to go. This talk did not frighten me. I didn’t care.

“But when I heard the people in that little church sing that great song of inspiration I knew that I wasn’t going to die so soon and, child that I was, my courage was amazing and before the song was ended I was voicing that one line—

“I feel like traveling on....”

And I meant it, too! That’s how I “got religion” at the age of six and it is with me yet at three score and ten plus. I still “feel like traveling on...!”

“Coming down the hill wasn’t hard at all. I slid most of the way. And when I entered the cabin my mother’s face was happier than I had ever seen it before in all my life.

“In no time at all, I was climbing all over the hills, ever eager to see what might be in the hollow just beyond. I picked huckleberries and blackberries, caught minnows in the creeks and lived the life of the average boy in the hills. If I had been taken to Eureka Springs on soft cushions and whizzed over paved highways in an automobile, I wonder if it would have been the same.

“The thing that happened to me happened to thousands both young and old during the two or three decades while Eureka Springs was at its height as a health resort. When such folks arrived in Eureka Springs over the crooked railway their ‘cure’ began immediately. The bumpty-bump-bump and the ceaseless sway of the old horse-drawn vehicles that met them at the depot started their livers into unprecedented activity even before they arrived to register at the Perry House or the Southern Hotel.

“Collapsible tin cups were very popular in those days and the health seekers would go from spring to spring, rest awhile in the cool shade, sample the water and argue the respective merits of Basin and Magnetic or Sweet and Crescent. They would keep on going to Dairy Spring and Grotto and some walked as far as Oil Spring to bring back a jug of water. A program of strenuous exertion like that, plus the copious drinking of pure water, induced an active patronage of the rest rooms provided at strategic points along the way and it worked wonders. Try it and see.

“As I write these lines I hear a great choir singing on the radio:

‘I love Thy rocks and rills,

Thy woods and templed hills,

My heart with rapture thrills....’

“Gosh-all-hemlock, they’re singing about old Eureka Springs.”[17]

XI
THE COMING OF THE RAILROAD

The “CASEY JONES” legend of railroad lore does not tie up with the turbulent history of the North Arkansas Line, but the two episodes do have a far-fetched parallel. If trouble is a weld of incident there is a connection between the two. The wreck of No. 382 of the Cannon Ball Express at Vaughn, Mississippi, on May 1, 1900 brought Casey into railroadana’s hall of fame, but the North Arkansas Railroad, now the Arkansas and Ozarks Line, experienced almost continued trouble during its first 60 years of history. The ballad makers have missed a good bet in ignoring the harrowed tale of this mechanical step-child of the central Ozarks. Time will probably weave the story into a legend, but that day has not yet arrived.

The Ozark region has had many ups and downs since the “Arkansaw Traveler” tuned his fiddle in the Pope county hills. Most of the frustrations, however, were of short duration. But the North Arkansas Railroad as a problem child of industry is written large in Ozark history. Two sections of the line have been reopened for service after a tense struggle for survival. The following historical outline will explain the difficulties the line has had:

1881. The Frisco Railroad, headed toward Oklahoma and Texas, reached Seligman, Missouri, this year. Eighteen miles to the southeast was the booming resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which had been settled and named two years before. The traveling public tired of the slow stage coach service, and the local business men wanted a branch line from the Frisco to the Spa. St. Louis capital got busy and a twelve-mile line from Seligman to Beaver, Arkansas, on White River was built. It was named the Missouri and Arkansas Railroad.

1882. The road was extended six miles, from Beaver to Eureka Springs, under a different company which was organized by Powell Clayton, then a resident of Eureka Springs. The two short lines consolidated as the Eureka Springs Railway. A schedule of nine trains a day, most of them with pullman service, filled the resort town with health seekers.

1899. A company was organized to extend the road into the hill country to the south and east. It was financed by business men of Little Rock, St. Louis and New York.

1901. The line was completed to Harrison and named the St. Louis and North Arkansas Railroad.

1902. An extension was built from Harrison to Leslie giving the line a trackage of 120 miles.

1905. The road had financial difficulties which ended in a foreclosure, but the stockholders started a program of expansion, determined to keep the road and make it pay.

1909. The road was extended from Leslie to Helena on the south, and Seligman to Joplin on the north, making an interstate railroad 369 miles long.

1911. The Shops at Eureka Springs and Leslie were abandoned. Harrison put up a donation of $25,000 and the shops were located there.

1914. On August 5th there was a disastrous wreck at Tupton Ford between Joplin and Neosho when the M. & N. A. motor coach was struck by a Kansas City Southern passenger train. Forty-three people were killed and many injured. Payments made to families of the victims almost depleted the already low treasury.

1917-1919. The M. & N. A. was operated by the government during World War I.

1921. On February 1 wages of employees were reduced by 20 per cent. This was followed by a walkout which became a strike that lasted nearly two years, causing much ill feeling and hardship. On July 31, operations on the road were suspended.

1922. Service on the road was reopened under new management but they had serious difficulties in operating the line.

1927. Into the hands of the receiver again.

1935. The road was sold at auction and bought by the Kell family of Wichita Falls, Texas, for $350,000. The name was changed to the Missouri and Arkansas.

1941-42. Offices and shops at Harrison were destroyed by fire.

1945. A disastrous flood destroyed much track.

1946. On September 6 there was a walkout of employees which led to an application for the abandonment of the property.

1948. Movement was started to reorganize and resume operations.

1949. The line was purchased and reorganized. The section between Cotton Plant and Helena was revived as the Helena and Northwestern Railroad. It started operations early in the year. The trackage between Harrison, Arkansas and Seligman, Missouri became the Arkansas and Ozarks Railway. Two Diesel engines were purchased for this 65-mile line. Trains carry carload shipments only and the amount of business regulates the size and frequency of trains. The sections between Joplin and Seligman in Missouri and from Harrison to Cotton Plant have been junked.

That is a brief history of the “turbulent” North Arkansas Railroad. Few railroads in our history have taken the severe beatings this road has suffered. But the business men and farmers of the central Ozarks are determined that this section have a railroad. When abandonment was apparent in 1947-48, they arose like the embattled farmers of Concord and Lexington and began a fight that has saved the road. Now it is in a modified form with freight service only and over only a fraction of the original 369 miles of trackage, but residents of the state are well pleased with the service and the line appears to be doing well.

The best historical narrative on the North Arkansas Railway is included in Jesse Lewis Russell’s history of northwest Arkansas, Behind These Ozark Hills (published in 1947). Pages 116 to 156 are devoted to the “turbulent career” of this line.

In 1901 there was great excitement when the stretch of road from Eureka Springs to Harrison was completed. People at the Spa hired rigs to drive them forty-five miles to Harrison in order to ride the first train back. It was a time for celebration and on the streets and in the shops and hotel lobbies this verse was sung:

“A rubber-tired surrey,

A rubber-tired hack

We’re going down to Harrison

To ride the Booger back.”

We now have the “Booger” back and it is a pleasure to hear him comin’ ’round the mountain, bell ringing, siren tooting, with car-loads of lumber, mineral ore and Eureka Springs water for the outside world.

About the time of the opening of the new Arkansas and Ozarks line, Clyde Newman of Harrison had an article in the Arkansas Gazette which gave most of the above data and some additional information.

XII
THE JAMES BOYS ON PLANER HILL

Legend connects Frank and Jesse James with this locality in a humorous episode that is not mentioned in the biographies of these famous outlaws. These men sometimes rode into Arkansas and it is reported that they had an uncle who operated a tavern at the stage stop on Planer Hill, before the town of Eureka Springs was started. It is quite probable that they sometimes “put up” with their uncle when they considered it safe to do so. We have no historical records about their visits here for outlaws seldom keep diaries and prefer to keep their movements secret.

Several years ago an aged man visited Eureka Springs and asked Sam A. Leath, who was the town’s leading guide, to show him to a place on the old stage trail two or three miles south of the city. Finding the spot he was looking for, just off State Highway 23, and not far from Lake Lucerne, the old man told the following story:

“’Twas in the 70’s when I resigned my parish at Ozark, Arkansas, to take over a church at Pierce City, Missouri. With four other men I traveled north on the stage, which was the only transportation available at that time. My companions were strangers but congenial fellows and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride through the Boston Mountains. At this spot, just south of the stage stop, we were halted by two bandits who proved to be Jesse and Frank James. They ordered us from the coach and stripped us of our money and valuables. Placing the loot in his hat, one of the highwaymen called me aside and asked me if I were not a minister of the gospel. I answered in the affirmative.

“‘Your companions are notorious gamblers,’ said the bandit, ‘and we have a special reason for robbing them. But with you it is different. We never take from preachers, widows, or orphans.’ With these words, he poured a generous portion of the booty into my coat pocket and warned me not to return it to the gamblers. The bandits then mounted their horses and disappeared in the woods.

“There was an ominous silence among my four companions while riding to the tavern. I couldn’t understand it. They made no complaint about being robbed and gave no indication of reporting the incident to the law. Even the driver of the stage seemed unconcerned about the affair.

“Upon arrival, I secured a room at the tavern for the night. As I was about to retire, I heard two men talking in an adjoining room. I recognized the voices as belonging to the two men we had encountered on the road. They were occupying the room next to me.

“‘Do you suppose that man was telling the truth when he said he was a preacher?’ said one of the men.

“‘I think so,’ replied the other, ‘but to make sure we will test him out at the breakfast table in the morning.’ He continued by outlining the ‘third degree’ they would give me.

“I heard every word of the plan and prepared to meet it. Far into the night I prayed for strength to meet the ordeal. Then I fell asleep and did not awake until called for breakfast.

“The brothers were waiting for me when I reached the dining room. When I took a place at the table, the one I decided was Frank sat down beside me. Immediately I felt the pressure of steel against my ribs. Jesse sat across the table in front of me. He asked me to say grace.

“Never before did such a fervent prayer fall from my lips. I thanked the Lord for the food, for guidance on the journey, for the welfare of my old parish, for the people of my new pastorate, and, lastly, for the companionship of the two men who were with me. I concluded by asking that richest blessings reward them all through life.

“All through the prayer I could feel the gun pressing against my side and could sense the piercing eyes of the bandit leader from across the table. When I concluded the prayer, we ate the food set before us and conversed in a congenial manner. At the conclusion of the meal, Jesse called me aside.

“‘You’re all right, parson,’ he said. ‘Luck to you in your new parish. If you travel this way again you may depend upon our protection.’

“I continued my journey and took up the pastorate at Pierce City. But I never saw the James brothers again.”[18]

XIII
HIGHLIGHTS OF HISTORY AND FOLKLORE

Judge Saunders of Berryville completed a cabin near the Basin Spring on or about July 4, 1879. A grocery store with a $200 stock was opened by O. D. Thornton on July 6th. By the end of July there were twelve crude dwellings perched on the hillsides near the Basin Spring. The population increased slowly during the first few weeks after the naming of the town. A count was made on August 10 and it totaled 180 permanent residents. People began coming in large numbers during the late summer and this immigration increased during the fall and winter. By July 4, 1880, an estimated 5,000 people were living in the community and the sound of hammering could be heard day and night as new buildings were put up.

During the first few weeks, the Basin Spring was the center of attraction, but it was not long until the other springs in the vicinity were discovered and used. Streets had to be laid out and the first project was Main Street. H. S. Montgomery, with the help of twenty men, opened up the valley in August, 1879. Business openings during the first year included: Van Winkle, lumber yard; A. D. Mize, hardware; Dr. Hogue, drug store; Jefferson, saloon; Walquist, tailor shop, William Conant, livery stable. Dr. McCarthy was the first resident physician and lived on the site now occupied by the Rock Cabin Courts. The first manufacturing business was a cane factory operated by a fellow named Cook. The first postmaster was T. M. Johnson. Hugo and Herman Seidel owned and operated the first produce house which stood at the mouth of Mill Hollow.

1880 and 1881 were boom years for the new town. Cora Pinkley Call in her Pioneer Days in Eureka Springs says that in 1881 there were fifty-seven boarding houses and hotels, one bank, thirty-three groceries, twelve saloons, twenty-two doctors, one undertaker, and twelve real estate agents. Earl Newport, whose father, J. W. Newport, was one of the early business men of the city, showed me a picture of about fifty boys who were “boot blacks” in the early days of the town. Earl was one of the boys who carried a portable outfit and gave a shine for a nickel. Mrs. Annie House, the oldest newspaper woman in Arkansas, was a small girl when she came to Eureka Springs in 1879. She has been a resident of the town during the entire seventy-five years and spent forty years working on local newspapers. Charley Stehm, artist in wood and stone, came to the town as a boy in the early eighties and lived here until his death, Sept. 22, 1954.

Transportation was a problem in the early days. Pierce City, Missouri, eighty-four miles to the north, was the nearest railroad point. In 1880, the Eureka Springs liverymen established a stage line that connected with the Butterfield stage at Garfield.

Eureka Springs was incorporated February 14, 1880. Elisha Rosson was the first mayor, but he did not remain in office but a few months. The second mayor, Mr. Carroll, took a census in May, 1881, and the population to said to have exceeded 8,000. In 1882, Eureka Springs was declared a city of the first class and ranked as one of the six largest cities of the state. Goodspeed, writing of this “Crazy Quilt” town about 1885, said:

“Everywhere that an abode can be constructed, houses of every description, tents and shelters, sprang up all over the mountain tops, hanging by corners on the steep sides, perched upon jutting boulders, spanning gulches, or nestling under crags in the grottoes. It is a most peculiar looking place, presenting an apparent disregard to anything like order and arrangement.”

The town had two disastrous fires in the eighties. The first one came early in the morning of November 3, 1883, destroying the business section on Mountain and Eureka streets. A fine drug store was located in the V-junction of Mountain and Eureka, a livery stable where the Christian Science church now stands, and a bakery across the street. The second big fire came in 1888 and burned the business section along Spring Street from Calip Spring to the Presbyterian Church. 480 houses were destroyed. Only four frame houses were left standing in the area.

According to Goodspeed, T. J. Hadley brought a printing press from Olathe, Kansas in November, 1879 and established the first newspaper. The date of the first issue of the Echo is given as February 21, 1880. Within two or three years, the town had two additional newspapers, the Dispatch and the Herald.

Eureka Springs has had its full share of legend and folklore and some of the fabulous tales are told with tongue in cheek. Take the marital swap of “Uncle” Adam and “Uncle” Dick. A couple called “Adam and Eve” lived in a rock shelter across the road from Johnson Spring. Dick and his wife occupied an adjoining shelter to the south. One day Adam traded Eve to Dick for his wife and got a horse and buggy and a dog to boot. Dick and his newly acquired wife left the country soon after the swap, but it is reported that the woman came back later and lived with Adam. This happened, according to the old timers, about the turn of the century.

Vance Randolph, in Who Blowed Up the Church House?,[19] gives a different version of the wife-trading story. He heard the anecdote from an old timer in Eureka Springs about 1950. Here is his version:

“One time there was two old men lived up Magnetic Holler, right close to a little branch they call Mystic Spring nowadays. One of these fellows was Uncle Adam, and he had a wife. The other one was knowed as Uncle Dick, and he didn’t have no wife, but he had two cows. They got to trading jackknives and shotguns, and finally Uncle Adam swapped his wife for one of Uncle Dick’s cows. Folks used to trade wives pretty free in them days, and nobody said much about it. Lots of them wasn’t really married anyhow, so there wasn’t no great harm done.

“But it wasn’t long ’till word got around that Uncle Adam’s woman had up and left him, and moved her stuff over to Uncle Dick’s cabin. The next time Uncle Adam came into town, somebody asked him if Uncle Dick had stole his wife. ‘Hell no,’ says Uncle Adam, ‘it was a fair swap, all open and above board. Dick give me his best cow for the old woman, and two dollars to boot.’

“Folks got to laughing about it, and one day the sheriff stopped Uncle Adam in the street. ‘This here trading wives is against the law nowadays,’ says he, ‘And everybody knows a woman is worth more than a cow, anyhow.’ Uncle Adam laughed right in the sheriff’s face. ‘Don’t you believe it, Sheriff,’ he says, ‘Don’t you believe it! Why, that there cow of mine is three-fourths Jersey!’”

XIV
THE CAPTURE OF BILL DOOLIN

It was during the winter of 1895-96. Bill Doolin, the Oklahoma outlaw was spending his “vacation” in Eureka Springs, taking the baths and hiding out from the law. He had allegedly killed three marshals at Ingalls, Okla., a short time before and committed other crimes over a period of several years of outlawry, and the law was hot on his trail when he disappeared at the first of the year, 1896.

Bill Tilghman, United States marshal, knew Doolin personally and set out to capture him. At a boarding house in Ingalls he learned that the outlaw had gone to some resort in Arkansas for his health and safety. The marshal selected Eureka Springs as the most likely place for Doolin’s hideout.

Tilghman arrived in Eureka Springs disguised as a preacher, wearing a Prince Albert coat and a derby hat. He registered at a hotel and left his baggage. He then walked to a little park in the center of town. A man was stooped over the spring, filling a jug with water. When he raised up the marshal saw that it was Doolin.

Tilghman knew the outlaw was quick on the draw and did not attempt to arrest him. Instead, he dropped into a nearby shop and watched him through the window. Doolin walked across the park, crossed a bridge that spanned a little stream, and ascended a flight of steps leading to a hotel.

Tilghman went back to the park, sat down and began thinking. He had left a shotgun at his hotel and his first thought was to get the gun, hide behind a tree and get his man as he came down the steps. But he wanted to take him alive. Then he devised what he thought was a better plan. He went to a nearby carpenter shop and ordered a box made long enough to hold his shotgun. It was to be hinged and easy to open. With this contraption he could sit in the park without attracting attention and get Doolin as he approached. The carpenter promised to have the box ready by late evening. He would polish it and make it look like a musical instrument case. That would mean another day in Eureka Springs. He would lay for Doolin early in the morning as he came from his hotel.

Tilghman ate lunch at a cafe and then having time to kill, decided to take one of the famous Eureka Springs baths. He noticed the Basin Spring Bath House across the bridge from the Basin Circle. He walked into the hallway and opened a door at the left to enter the lobby. His eye took in everything in the room at a glance. There was a desk in the corner with a man sitting behind it. Several men were in the room, playing checkers or reading. One of them sat behind a pot-bellied stove at the east end of the lobby, his face behind a newspaper.

When Bill entered the room this man lowered his paper for an instant. The marshal saw that it was Doolin.

“I want a bath,” said Tilghman and stepped quickly into the hall, walking in the direction of the room marked “Baths.” Half way down the hall he stopped in front of a door that opened directly into the east end of the lobby; Doolin was sitting within a few feet of that door.

What if he had recognized him and was awaiting his entrance? He must take a chance. He pulled his .45 from its holster and opened the door. There sat Doolin still reading.

“Put up your hands, I’ve got you covered,” said the marshal as he stepped around the stove.

The outlaw’s eyes opened wide in surprise as he recognized Tilghman. He reached for his gun but Tilghman grabbed for his wrist, missed and caught his coat sleeve. The sleeve ripped, but he held on.

“Doolin, I don’t want to kill you, but I will if you don’t get your hands up.”

Doolin saw that he was trapped and obeyed. Tilghman asked the clerk to get the outlaw’s gun, but the man was so nervous that he made several attempts before he succeeded in getting it out of the holster. The other men in the lobby had run like quail when the trouble started.

Tilghman put handcuffs on Doolin and took him to his hotel to get his belongings. Among the items on the dresser was a silver cup the outlaw had bought for his baby boy. Tilghman put it in the suitcase along with other things and they were on their way to the depot to catch the 4 o’clock train. A boy was sent to the carpenter to tell him the box would not be needed.

When they got on the train, Doolin promised to make no attempt to escape and the handcuffs were removed. They arrived in Guthrie, Okla., at 10 p. m., and Doolin was placed in the federal jail to await trial. But that trial never came. He made a jail break in July, hid out on a Texas ranch for several months, and was killed by officers when he attempted to return to Oklahoma to get his wife and baby.

(Credit for source material on the capture of Bill Doolin goes to the late Charley Stehm, an article in the Eureka Springs Times-Echo by Annie House, “Eureka Springs: Stair-Step Town” by Cora Pinkley Call, and “Marshall of the Frontier—Life and Stories of William Matthew (Bill) Tilghman”, written by his wife, Zoe Tilghman and published by Arthur H. Clark and Company, Cleveland in 1949. The incidents of the capture are somewhat similar in all these accounts but Mrs. Tilghman goes into greater detail in reporting the story.)

XV
STORIES IN STONE

According to the information on the pictorial sign board in the Basin Circle Park, Eureka Springs has fifty-six miles of retaining walls. Several years ago an old-timer told me he figured that the walls of this town, if put end to end, would reach a distance of forty miles. No one has taken the trouble to measure these walls so one guess is as good as another. In addition to the walls, a large amount of stone has been used in the construction of hotels, homes and business buildings. 60,000 cubic yards of stone in the walls and buildings of the city is a conservative estimate. In comparison with the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, this mass of stone-work is comparatively small, but it is a lot of stone to go into the make-up of one small town. It would make a single wall four feet high, one foot thick, and approximately sixty-six miles long.

The great Egyptian Pyramid consists of 3,150,000 cubic yards of stone or about fifty times as much material as used in the building of Eureka Springs. The pyramid is about 450 feet high and covers 13½ acres of land. It is made of 2,300,000 limestone blocks each weighing 2½ tons. According to ancient historians, it took 100,000 men twenty years to build it. At Eureka Springs, workmen in Powell Clayton’s time, “the roaring eighties,” put up most of the walls and buildings in a period of eight or ten years. The Crescent Hotel was built in the mid-eighties and several business buildings were constructed of stone after the big fire of 1888.

The stone work of Eureka Springs may be only 1/50th of that of the great pyramid, but the labor involved was immense. The weight of 60,000 cubic yards of limestone is approximately 132,000 tons. The stone was quarried near Beaver six miles away. It had to be transported in wagons or on railroad flat cars to the townsite. If brought by rail it was handled three or four times before it reached its destination. The mere lifting of the stone required at least three hundred million foot-pounds of work. If we knew how many foot-pounds a man can do in a day, we could figure the labor potential. The stone had to be cut and laid by skilled workmen. Most of this stone, laid seventy years ago, is in excellent condition today.

Both limestone and sandstone are used for building material in northwest Arkansas, but the sandstone must be of the harder varieties to be useful for this purpose. Limestone is preferred, either of the Boone variety or marble. Marble limestone is found in Carroll County, but it is not as plentiful as other grades. The block of marble sent from Arkansas to be placed in the national Washington monument, was quarried near the corner of Carroll and Newton counties.

Onyx marble is found in this section and at one time Eureka Springs had an onyx factory which used the stone in manufacturing jewelry. Great slabs of it were taken from the caves in the vicinity. It is a stone of many colors—white, cream, dull red, and yellowish brown, with the colors usually in alternate stripes. It takes a brilliant polish.

The agate, found in our hills, is a crystal formation, but the particles are so minute that they are discernable only under the microscope. It is shaped by the cavity in which it is formed. The colors depend upon the mineral matter it contains; iron producing reds, saponite the greens, chalcedony the grays, and caladonite the blues. The agate is classed as a gem but it is also used in the manufacture of bowls, vases, signet rings, and for rollers in the textile industry.

William Cullen Bryant in his poem “Thanatopsis” spoke of the earth as “rock ribbed and ancient as the sun.” Perhaps he was wrong in his conjecture that the earth is as old as the sun, but we leave that to the astronomers. It is true that the rock-ribbed earth is very old and each of the “ribs” gives testimony of antiquity. One of the interesting fossilized remnants found in our Ozark country is the crinoid, commonly referred to as a sea lily stem.

Had old Father Neptune decided to pick a bouquet of sea lilies for his wife, the lovely Amphitrite, he could have found them in abundance—on the floor of the sea where Eureka Springs now stands. According to the geologists, there were two periods, each millions of years long, and separated by millions of years, when this region was the bottom of the sea. The Ozark Mountains are the oldest range on the North American continent and were at one time higher than they are now. They rose from the sea, grew old and weathered to a mere plain, and then sank for a second inundation. During the millions of years that followed, which geologists call the Mississippian Period, a class of sea lilies, called Crinoids, lived in the warm waters of this vast sea.

These Crinoids were fixed to the bottom of the sea, preferring a depth of about 150 fathoms. They were attached permanently, or temporarily, mouth upward, with a jointed stalk. At the top of the stem there was a muscular body that had both motor and sensory qualities. It lived upon minute protozoa and other animalcules, which it absorbed from the sea water.

When the sea receded from the North American continent these Crinoids were preserved by nature’s chemistry. They were fossilized into the Boone Limestone. These fossils are found in abundance in the Ozarks, especially at Eureka Springs, and in Benton county near Sulphur Springs, Arkansas. Some of the stems held together and appear as screw-like formations in the rock. Sometimes they were broken up and the discs or segments of the stem are scattered through the rock strata. Two hundred seventy-five million years of the earth’s past lie buried in this Ozark limestone.

I sometimes take tourists on hikes at Eureka Springs and one of my favorite trails is over East Mountain that rises abruptly from the valley floor of this famous stairstep town. Near Onyx Spring I point out the Crinoids in the rock strata which give mute evidence that this region was once the bottom of the sea. Some of these sea lily fossils are almost perfect, others are broken into fragments.

One need not be a geologist, or even a student of geology, to observe and enjoy the rock formation of the Ozarks. The region is an open book and even he who runs may read and enjoy it.

There are stories in the stones at Eureka Springs. Tourists who visit Cork, Ireland usually go out to the village of Blarney, four miles distant, and take a look at the medieval castle built by Cormac McCarthy in 1449. On the summit of the castle tower is the famous Blarney Stone which has been kissed by thousands of people from all parts of the world. It is an age-old superstition that to kiss this stone endows one with the gift of coaxing, wheedling, flattery and blarney. Eureka Springs does not have a “Wheedling Stone,” but it does have the Sliding Rocks at Little Eureka Spring which tradition has marked with special purpose. The name, Sliding Rocks, has a double meaning. In the first place, two large flat rocks, each about twenty feet in diameter, stand tilted against the mountain side at an angle of forty-five degrees. They slid down the mountain, ages ago perhaps, to their present location. That was long before the white man came to drink the “Wonder Water” from the near-by spring. An oak tree a foot in diameter now stands in the path which the rocks took in making the descent to their present position. Putting the rocks in this position was the work of Nature; to wrap them in a halo of tradition called for the ingenuity of man.

Some person who liked to have fun noticed the Sliding Rocks and started a custom that developed into a ritual. They became initiation stones for newlyweds as a part of the charivari ceremony. In the Ozarks, newly married couples are usually “shivareed” by their friends. They are serenaded with bells and shotguns and other racket making devices and if the groom refuses to “treat” with candy and cigars, he is given an unconventional bath in the river. In some communities the bride and groom are driven around town in a horse-drawn vehicle or an old jalopy.

At Eureka Springs, it became a practice to have the newlyweds slide down the perpendicular rock near the spring. It developed into a tradition and even today honeymooners, others too, try the daring slide to prove their courage. The surface of the stone is covered with scratches made by shoe heels that dug-in during the sliding operation. The most disastrous potential about this fun-making ordeal is the disruption of the seat of the pants.

XVI
THE SPRINGS

There are forty-two springs within the corporate limits of Eureka Springs. Most of these belong to the city and are included in the municipal park system. A few are privately owned such as Ozarka in Mill Hollow, Congress, Lion, Carry Nation and Cold Spring on East Mountain. Sam A. Leath has counted and named sixty-three springs within a one-mile radius of the center of town and it is said that there are about 1200 springs in the Western District of Carroll County.

The Basin Spring, so called because of the peculiar depression in the limestone rock, was first called the Indian Healing Spring and discovered by a pioneer hunter, Dr. Alvah Jackson, in 1854. It comes from a cave in the cliff-side and in the early days made a cataract down the mountain to the valley floor where it joined Little Leatherwood Creek. About one hundred feet below the cave that houses the spring is a flat rock, now covered with a deep layer of concrete. In this rock, the Indians cut two basins, one about eighteen inches in diameter and twelve inches deep, the other, twelve feet farther down, about five feet in length and ten inches deep. The larger basin was partially destroyed by falling rock before the spring was discovered by white men. The smaller basin is still in existence at the bottom of the Wishing Well. The fountain from this spring is surrounded by the Basin Circle Park with band stand, and seats for those who like to loiter in a restful, picturesque environment.

Sweet Spring is on Spring street around the corner from the post office. Its original position was in the hollow about two hundred yards below its present site. When Spring Street was laid out by Powell Clayton and other city officials in the early eighties, the stream of water was tapped and a stone pit erected with steps leading down to the fountain. The spring itself was imprisoned in stone for sanitary reasons. No one seems to know the origin of the name Sweet for this spring. Benches beneath the hard maple and ginkgo trees surround this spring and it is a cool spot for summer loafing.

In the early days, Harding Spring ranked next to Basin in importance. It has supplied the Palace Bath House with water for bathing for almost a half a century. It flows from a picturesque cliff on Spring Street with a rock projection called Lover’s Leap a few feet away. It is one of the most photographed spots in Eureka Springs.

Congress Spring at the rear of the Congress Spring apartments is “honey out of the rock” for those who like top quality aqua pura. It comes from a cave and is said to have been discovered by workmen while blasting rock on Spring Street. Standing at the spring one may look skyward and observe a street seventy feet directly above. The rock formation at this point is a miniature Gibraltar.

Crescent Spring, between the Carnegie Library and Presbyterian Church, derived its name from the large crescent-shaped ledge of rocks over which it originally flowed for a distance of fifteen feet. It is now walled in stone and sheltered with a pointed roofed pagoda.

Continuing on Spring Street, Grotto Spring “on the boulevard” is next. It has a picturesque position in the mountain side, fronted with a lane of sycamore trees. The spring was named because of its location in a natural stone grotto.

On East Mountain there is water almost everywhere. Some of the best known springs, each with its individual scenic setting, are: Cave, Little Saucer, Big Saucer, Little Eureka, Onyx, Carry Nation, Soldier and Cold. Cave spring, near the home of Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Ward Dresbach, flows a stream of pure cold water from a narrow cave. Little Eureka has a small stream and never goes dry. This spring is known for the purity of its waters (5½ grains of solids to the gallon) and many people swear by it. It is said that Little Eureka water won second place in a world wide contest at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Water from a spring in Switzerland won first.

The Carry A. Nation spring flows from a cave which the crusader used as an “ice box” during her sojourn in Eureka Springs (1908-11). This cave has a constant temperature the year ’round and is an ideal natural refrigerator. In the days preceding artificial refrigeration, the East Mountain folks made use of Carry’s cave for storing milk, butter and other perishables. The water from the cave spring has been piped across the street to Hatchet Hall, which is now a museum and art center, owned by the artists, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Freund.

Onyx Spring comes from a cave in which onyx was once secured for making jewelry. It was formerly called Laundry Spring because of its popularity as a place for washing clothes. A sarvis tree now grows from the rock directly over the spring.

Soldier Spring is at the entrance of a small cave at the west end of Nut Street on East Mountain. According to legend, two bushwackers were killed at the entrance of this cave by federal soldiers during the Civil War. A bushwacker is an outlawish fellow who hides behind a bush and takes a “whack” at you with his rifle gun. In this instance, the soldiers got the first whack and the stream from the cave was named Soldier Spring. For several years the large oak tree across the road from the spring was a natural bee tree and a swarm of honey-makers occupied it each season. Not many modern towns can boost of a bee tree within the city limits.

In Mill Hollow we have the famous Ozarka Spring, the only Eureka Springs water that is commercialized. It is shipped in glass or enamel-lined railway cars to many cities in the mid-west. Ozarka is a liquid treasure from nature’s vast laboratory. Other springs in the vicinity are Little Ozarka, Minnehaha with its Indian legend, and the Bancroft Springs.

Magnetic Spring is one of the most popular springs in the city. The water was once thought to be radio-active and old-timers claimed it would magnetize a knife blade. It is a popular place for picnickers and the city has provided a shelter-house with tables, barbecue pit and other facilities. Magnetic Hollow has other springs such as Mystic, which flows from a picturesque cliff, and Bell Spring which makes a musical sound like the tinkling of a bell. An iron and sulphur spring was once located near the railway depot, but is not now flowing.

To the west and south of the city, within walking distance, are the famous Oil and Johnson springs and sixteen springs that feed the city lake that supplies the municipal water system. A bathhouse once stood under the cliff between Johnson and Oil Springs. The oil spring is peculiar in that the waters have an oleaginous feeling when rubbed between the hands. It was once considered beneficial in diseases of the scalp.

Lion Spring flows from the cliff near the back door of the home of Mr. and Mrs. Everett Wheeler, publishers of the Eureka Springs Times-Echo. For many years the Lion Spring Hotel, operated by “Mother” Belden, was located on this site. A stone Lion’s head is set up as a dispensary and the water flows through its mouth. This spring once supplied a stream of water for Dr. Alvah Jackson’s primitive bathhouse in the rock shelter fifty feet below. A wash-tub was secured from a sugar camp on Keel’s Creek and this, with half-a-dozen canteens, constituted the outfit of the first water-cure establishment in this part of the state.

Calip Spring is on South Main Street near the Elk’s Club. It supplied the community watering trough in the early days of the town. Fishermen now use this trough as a depository for minnows. Gadd Spring is farther north on Main Street and is housed in a rock edifice made from crystal and other odd-shaped rocks.

In regard to the springs at Eureka, L. J. Kolklosh wrote in 1881:

“No other springs in the world have had so many cures and such a reputation in so short a time as the Eureka Springs of Arkansas. History does not record an equal.... Eureka had made a name that has been heard throughout Christendom.”

XVII
THE LAY OF THE TOWN

A crazy quilt is made up of pieces arranged without pattern or order. Eureka Springs is like that. It is an architectural labyrinth unique among cities. The recently built annex of the Penn Memorial Baptist Church has a home for the minister on the third floor. You may enter at the street-level door on Mountain Street, walk through the rooms—a distance of about forty feet—and look down upon Owen Street, thirty feet below. This sounds like an architectural fairy tale, but it is true. Houses are built like that in this Switzerland of America. In many homes the street entrance is on the second or third floor, or the house may be reached by a stairway clinging to the mountain side. One business house is surrounded by streets like a moat ’round a castle and it has four street addresses each on a different level. In the early days when the town was thronged with health seekers who wanted homes near the springs, terraces were built and hemmed-in with massive stone walls. Houses were constructed on these terraces with stairways leading from one level to the other. Frequently a natural cave opens at the backdoor. The yards and gardens have the appearance of “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” built by Nebuchadnezzar for his hill-loving queen. Some residents may step from their gardens to the roof of the house while others must climb stairways to their patch of vegetables.

The first lawsuit in Eureka Springs, according to the old-timers, was caused by a woman who lived in one of these terraced homesites. She carelessly threw dishwater out of the backdoor and down a neighbor’s chimney, damaging the furniture.

Vance Randolph tells about a drunken farmer who was found in the streets of the town one Saturday night. The pavement is not level by any means and the poor farmer was walking with one foot on the sidewalk and one in the gutter. A woman came along and the fellow called on her for help. “You’re just drunk,” she told him. “Is that it?” he said, much relieved, “My gosh, I thought maybe I was crippled.”

Eureka Springs is laid out with 238 named streets with no direct cross intersections. (One or two right-angle crossings have been found since Ripley featured this item in his “Believe It or Not.”) On the map the streets look like a bewildered maze with the letters U and V formed fifty-one times, the letter S thirteen times, O, seven times, and perhaps other alphabetical curiosities in this labyrinth of streets. There are five street levels on West Mountain from Main Street in the valley to the Crescent Hotel on Prospect Avenue.

Many exaggerated tales have been told about this “crazy quilt” town. There is the fellow, for instance, who doesn’t need a picture window in his house to observe the scenery. He merely looks up the chimney and watches his neighbor drive the cows home from the pasture. And don’t forget the well digger who was digging a well on East Mountain. When down about forty feet the bottom of the well fell out and he landed (on his feet) right in the middle of Main Street. They had to change their plans and dig the well up instead of down in order to strike water.

Eureka Springs has only two business thoroughfares, Main Street in the valley from Planer Hill to the railroad station, and Spring Street which branches off of Main at the City Auditorium and winds around the mountain to the Crescent Hotel. Once, in the early days, a feud developed among the merchants on Main (then called Mud Street) and they built a high board fence right down the middle of the street. This made the traffic lanes so narrow that a wagon could barely squeeze through. The fence was soon removed by order of the city authorities. Spring Street is lined with flowing springs—Sweet, Harding, Congress, Crescent, Grotto, and Dairy on the Harmon Playgrounds, once the site of the old auditorium. This street was engineered by Governor Powell Clayton (they always called him “governor”) who helped dress up the town in the early eighties. Sweet spring was “moved” from the hollow behind the post office to its present location on the Spring Street level.

In addition to the street layouts, other believe it or nots in the city are the Basin Park Hotel, “eight floors and every floor a ground floor,” the St. Elizabeth’s Church, “entered through the steeple,” and Pivot Rock, sixteen inches in diameter at the base and thirty-two feet across at the top. The hotel stands against the side of the mountain with its street level door on Spring. It is bridged from the rear to paths on the mountain side at four different levels. The “steeple” of the church is in reality a detached bell-tower. It is on the Crescent Grade level and steps lead down to the church which is set on a terrace held in place by a twenty-foot wall. A rock can be tossed from this terrace to the roof of the Carnegie Library about one hundred feet below on another street. The travel distance between the two locations is about one-fourth mile.

The numerous stairways of wood and stone, connecting street levels, have given rise to the name, “Stairstep Town.” Cora Pinkley Call used this title for her book on Eureka Springs, published in 1953. Some of the leading stairways are: Jacob’s Ladder, Sweet Springs, Magnetic Spring Skyway, and the “upway” from Spring Street to Eureka Street. Jacob’s Ladder is a series of wooden steps up East Mountain from the Main Street level to the Skydoor residential district on the mountain side. Rest stops are provided along the way in the form of seats where the old may rest and the young, perchance, do a little courting. The Sweet Spring steps are of stone and they lead from the spring, through the tree tops, to the terminus of two streets three hundred yards above. The Magnetic Spring stairway is at the junction of Main street with Magnetic Drive, reaching up to Hillside (Depot Grade). These steps are now covered with moss and seldom used. It was once a popular walk-way from the Sanitarium on the hill to Magnetic Spring. The winding “up way” from the foot of Mountain Street at the Baptist Church is a short cut to a private home called Mount Air. Taking this stairway reminds us of the tourist who asked a native Ozarker if he was on the right road to Springfield. “Well, not exactly,” he replied, “This road just moseys along for a spell, then it turns into a pig trail, then a squirrel track, and finally runs up a tree and ends in a knot-hole.” If you take this stairway and path to the upper street, turn to the left and follow the path around the mountain, you end up at the rear entrance to the fourth floor of the Basin Park Hotel.

Airplane View of the City

XVIII
THE STREET CAR SYSTEM

Eureka Springs at one time had the most unique street car system in the nation. It began as a mule car line in 1891, but was electrified seven years later. It remained in operation until 1923 when it was crowded out by jalopies which invaded the town. The streets were not wide enough to accommodate both the street car and the Model T. The total length of the line was about three miles, but the two terminals of the main line were only half a mile apart. The entire system was a single track with three passing switches. The track was standard gauge and placed near the curb at one side of the street, as the streets were too narrow for center tracks.

John T. Brown, writing in “Trolley Sparks,” says that the Citizens Railway Company of Eureka Springs had a total of twelve cars, five of which were closed cars operated by one man, six two-man open cars, and one work-car which was also used as a party car. Except for two of the cars, all were originally mule-drawn cars purchased second hand from Houston, Texas. These cars were motorized with second hand electrical equipment purchased from the Detroit Street Railways. In 1904, two new summer cars were obtained from the St. Louis Car Company.

The Daily Times-Echo in the twenty-fifth anniversary issue of April 24, 1905, says:

“In no other city on the continent can there be found a street railway that leads such a winding course around and up and down the mountain-sides as does the Citizens Electric Railway of Eureka Springs. As you alight at the depot of the St. Louis and North Arkansas Railway you find a well-equipped street car there in waiting, and presently you are swung up and around the mountain side along what appears to be a ledge or precipice, and to the timid, it seems that in each instance there is danger of the car being hurled to the valley below. But really such a possibility is very remote, for during all the years the line has been in operation there has never been a serious accident. To make safety doubly sure, the far-seeing management has had guard rails laid all along this section of the line. From the depot up the mountain side to the intersection with the main line at the Crescent Spring, a little more than half a mile, the ascent amounts to a fraction over 101 feet, or a little more than 200 feet to the mile. The main line, which circles around West Mountain, traversing the most popular thorofare of the city and passing most all the famous springs and principal institutions, is not without its grades and wondrous curves.... At the Auditorium (now the Harmon Playgrounds), the track commences a most charming and tortuous ascent, and a feat of engineering that has challenged the admiration of many scientific men who have visited the resort. A roadbed had to be graded around the mountain side at angles that would seem ridiculous were it anywhere else than in this unusual mountain range. One car will be only a few yards from and above the other, and apparently going in the same direction when actually, they are headed toward opposite ends of the line. These ends, however, are only 300 yards apart, one end resting in the valley while the other is at the mountain’s peak. From the Crescent Hotel to the Auditorium there is a descent of 140 feet.

“The equipment and service on this street railway is better than can be found in many cities of far greater population than Eureka Springs, and the entire system is a source of gratification and pride to our people. Visitors make the valley echo with their merry shouts as they are carried around its course in the beautifully decorated and lighted trolley party cars, and the bands and orchestras of the city are frequent participants in these festivities.”

XIX
CARRY A. NATION

Carry A. Nation was a militant voice in the “wilderness of sin” at the turn of the century. Her three hatchets, which she named “Faith, Hope and Charity,” cut deeply into the liquor industry. Not that the liquor she destroyed in her attacks on bars and saloons amounted to a great deal, but her influence in fostering nation-wide prohibition was far reaching. She spent considerable time in jail and paid numerous fines, but this did not lesson her enthusiasm for the cause to which she devoted her life. Carry hated liquor, tobacco, rouge, lip-stick, and immorality in all its phases. She operated under the unwritten law which, she thought, superseded man-made legislation. Even some of the churches did not condone her radical ways and closed their doors to her. But she organized her own.

Carry married twice; first to a young fellow in Cass County, Missouri, who called himself “doctor.” He was addicted to drink and Carry could not reform him so she left him and returned to the home of her parents. He died shortly after their baby was born. Her second marriage was to David Nation, a lawyer, newspaper man, and later, a Campbellite preacher. This marriage fared better than the first one but it was not a happy affair. Carry cut the swath for the family and David had to string along as best he could.

Carry Nation’s militant crusades against the liquor traffic began at Kiowa, Kansas about 1900. After “cleaning up” the town to her satisfaction she turned her face toward Wichita. She met with considerable opposition in the big town and her raids landed her in jail, but friends paid her out. At Topeka she used the hatchet for the first time in her raids.

After a few years of raiding and smashing she went into chautauqua to lecture on temperance. She made a speaking tour in Europe in 1908 and landed in jail in Scotland where she had to serve the full sentence. (The Scotch did not like to see their whiskey spilled). In 1909, at the age of sixty-three, she bought a little farm near Alpena in Boone County, Arkansas where she spent a part of her time during the year that followed. Then she selected Eureka Springs as her retirement home and purchased a two-story frame house on Steele Street which she named Hatchet Hall. She decided to start a college at Eureka Springs for the teaching of temperance. She called it the Carry A. Nation College and erected a frame building near her home for class rooms. But the college did not last long for in 1911, while making a temperance speech from a buggy in the street in front of the Basin Circle, she had a stroke, and died a few days later. Her body was taken to her girlhood home at Belton, Missouri for burial.

XX
A BANK ROBBERY THAT FAILED

On the night of September 26, 1922, five men were camped in the woods on the hill near where the Mount Air Court is now located, well hidden from the traffic on U. S. Highway 62. Sitting around the camp fire were Si Wilson, Marcus Hendrix, a 21-year-old Indian, a man named Cowan, and the two Price brothers, Charlie and George. They were desperate Oklahoma outlaws from the Cookson Hills, remnants of the old Henry Starr gang. Their business at Eureka Springs was to rob the First National Bank.

Sitting around the bed of coals this September night, the outlaws discussed their plans. Charlie Price, the leader, did most of the talking. He outlined the plan for the robbery on the morrow at 12:05 P.M. when practically all business houses would be closed for the lunch hour. Hendrix was to remain in the car at the front of the bank, ready for a quick getaway.

“I guess you fellers know what you’re doing,” said Wilson, who had recently joined the gang. “But don’t forget what Sam Lockard and Henry Starr said. They warned you that Eureka Springs was a deathtrap.”

Price laughed and said that it would be easy because everything was well planned.

“We’d better hit the hay and get some sleep,” said Charlie. “Big day tomorrow.” As he rolled into his blankets he remembered to wind his watch. He turned the stem carefully in the darkness but fate took a hand and a little extra pressure sent the hands around one revolution without his knowledge. His faithful old watch had played a trick on him.

At exactly 11:05 A.M., mistaken by the bandits to be 12:05 P.M., a car drove up in front of the First National Bank on Spring Street. Hendrix remained at the wheel while the four others entered the bank. The story of the robbery and its tragic aftermath has been told in newspapers, by Horace H. Brown in Startling Detective Magazine, and by Cora Pinkley Call in her book “Eureka Springs—The Stair-Step Town.”

Members of the bank staff on duty on September 27, 1922, were: Tobe Smith, cashier, Fred Sawyer, teller, Mrs. Maude Shuman, Miss Loma Sawyer and Miss Jewel Davidson. Customers in the bank when the robbers entered were: Sam Holland, Robert Easley, John Easley and Luther Wilson. Others who walked in while the holdup was in progress were: John K. Butt, Claude Arbuckle and Bob Bowman, clerk at the Basin Park Hotel.

Tobe Smith saw the four men enter the bank and when they drew their guns he stepped on the burglar alarm which had connections at the Bank of Eureka Springs, a block up the street, and the Basin Park Hotel, the same distance in the other direction. The robbers did not know this but lined up the occupants of the bank, face to the wall, and proceeded to scoop up all available cash and bonds. While doing this Charlie Price noticed the clock on the wall. The hands stood at exactly 11:10 A.M. Time had played its trick.

In the meantime the alarm had caused a furor of excitement in town, and C. E. Burson of the Bank of Eureka Springs had sent a bullet from his pistol that punctured a rear tire of the bandit’s car. Young Hendrix, getting excited, started the car slowly down Spring Street but a bullet struck him as he reached the junction with Center Street and he turned the car into a railing at the head of a stairway. He was captured without offering resistance.

By this time the four bandits had left the bank with the money in a sack, taking two of the bank employees as hostages. They knew they would have to fight their way out and sought to escape down the stairway by the Times-Echo office which leads to Center Street. Guns were popping and bullets flying everywhere. Si Wilson was killed instantly, George Price died a few minutes after being taken to Dr. R. H. Huntington’s hospital, Charlie Price died from his wounds a few days later.

Cowan was wounded. He and Hendrix were sentenced to terms in the state penitentiary.

Eureka Springs citizens who battled with the outlaws were: Ernie Jordan, Joe McKimmey, Jess Littrell, Robert Bowman, Homer Brittan and Sam Harmon. The story of their courage in defeating this desperate gang without loss of a man was told in newspapers throughout the country. None of them were wounded except Ernie Jordan who received a powder burn in the face. F. O. Butt, Eureka Springs attorney, was president of the First National Bank at that time. He had his office over the bank building. He was glad to see the sack of money and bonds returned without loss. It had been dropped on the Center Street stairway during the fight.

XXI
INSPIRATION POINT

The Ozarks is a land of dreams. Some of them succeed, some fail. Traveling through the hill country we find numerous ruins of partially built projects, that reveal the urge of man to build and perpetuate. “Coin” Harvey’s Pyramid at Monte Ne, the Kingston Project in Madison County, the old Chautauqua Assembly at Sulphur Springs, the numerous old hotels at once-popular watering places, ghosts of a past era when the water cure was a national fad, social and cultural colonies, the lengthened shadows of promoters or reformers, that existed for a few years and then passed into oblivion. These are monuments to dreams that failed or prospered for a season and then passed out.

On the other hand there are numerous active enterprises in the hills such as Ted Richmond’s Wilderness Library in Newton County, and the famed “School of the Ozarks” near Hollister, Missouri. Other projects have been built with broad business perspective such as the town of Bull Shoals. Churches have been successful in establishing permanent institutions such as the Sequoyah Assembly at Fayetteville and the Subiaco Academy in Logan County. Some projects with more than local interest were started by one person and completed by others.

The unique stone building called “The Castle,” located at Inspiration Point in Carroll County, on U. S. Highway 62, six miles west of Eureka Springs, was originally the dream of a Texas inventor and oil man. In the 1920’s, W. O. Mowers of Dallas selected this scenic point as the site of a palatial country home because of its comparative isolation and the view of White River 500 feet below. Being a world traveler, it reminded him of scenery on the Rhine River in Germany with which he was familiar, and he visualized the replica of an old German castle. The rock used in the construction of the building was quarried near the village of Beaver, five miles away. Each stone was cut to fit a certain place in the structure and was put together like a jigsaw puzzle. The living room was made 30 by 44 feet, with a huge fireplace at each end. Pointed rock covered the exterior, following an Egyptian plan of architecture.

After spending about $80,000 on the project the Texas man was unable to complete it. In 1932, the building and several hundred acres of land were purchased by Charles Reign Scoville, a noted traveling Evangelist, of the Christian Church. He completed the building and made it a regional center for evangelism and religious training. This scenic spot overlooking the river and the spacious valley was a great inspiration to the preacher-evangelist, so he named it Inspiration Point. This name has now become a permanent geographical feature. Mr. Scoville lived only a few years to enjoy his dream.